He wasn’t just buying a business. He was buying a brand, one that plays in the high end of the market and resonates with customers who value luxury home furnishings.

“There aren’t many brands out there that have a Kindel-like heritage — and that’s exciting to me,” said John Van Zee, the co-owner and president of The Taylor Co. in Grand Rapids, which recently acquired Kindel Furniture Co. from Fisher Properties of Indiana Inc.

Kindel will complement the Taylor Co.’s other furniture brands, which include Superior Furniture and Taylor Millwork.

Taylor plans to consolidate Kindel’s production into its Wyoming facility near Eastern Avenue and use more technology to produce Kindel’s luxurious furniture, thus improving lead times. The company will do it in a way that maintains Kindel’s heritage of producing fine, hand-crafted furniture and will “zealously protect” Kindel’s identity as a luxury brand, Van Zee said.

“We want to maintain that high quality, and we hope to improve upon that high quality by a greater level of efficiency,” he said. “We don’t want to erode any of the things that created the passion for Kindel furniture.”

Taylor Co. also will expand the Kindel product line.

“We’ll be creating some very distinct collections,” said Van Zee, who spoke recently with Business Review about the acquisition and the future of Kindel Furniture, an iconic brand that goes back to Grand Rapids’ heyday as the Furniture City.

What was the appeal of merging with Kindel?

When you look at high-end brands, and what creates a high-end brand, time works to the advantage of luxury brands. If we chose, we could create a Kindel Furniture look-alike, but we wouldn’t have that history, we wouldn’t have that passionate following.So, from my personal point of view, it’s exciting to have that kind of brand and expand upon it.

What does the Kindel brand say to you? What is the brand statement?

Quality execution. In my limited exposure to residential furniture, as an insider, I don’t see anyone that executes quite like Kindel. I’m not certain we get rewarded like that yet, but I want to see that we get to that point. It is just impeccable execution.How do we make it better? Service. Service is a part of quality ..., we can improve our quality with a higher level of service and shorter lead times.

What are your plans for the business, and how does it fit with what you currently do?Except for the level of technology, our facilities are really mirror images from an equipment point of view. Ours is more recent, and we use more technology.

The simple fact is, we consolidate into one building, it reduces the cost, and you’re going to consolidate where you have the more modern technology.

How do you take what is really kind of an old-world industry and fit it into today’s high-tech manufacturing world? How do you blend those two?

I don’t think that’s going to be the hardest thing we do, but it’s also not going to be the easiest thing we do. What our goal is is to utilize technology to only enhance what Kindel customers have come to expect.

How do we do that? Well, there are certain things we can’t change. If our customers value hand-carved detail, we’re going to continue to hand carve.

What they probably don’t value is the fact that we have a numerically controlled machine with an electronic file that brings up a particular chair model and says, “All right, we’re ready to now put the blank in the machine and produce that part,” versus four or five steps at Kindel with an operator and electric machine that’s controlled — it might be with a foot pedal or it might be pneumatic, where you push the button — but the set-up is manual, and there’s no numeric control.

Where does Kindel need to be as far as geographic markets and product markets for the future?

Where people spend money.

There are some initiatives that are under way — I am not able to disclose — that will put us into more key markets with higher visibility over the next 24 months.

We both know the cities. We need a presence in major markets on the East Coast: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C. Atlanta, undeniably, is a key market for us. South Florida, Texas, and then certainly the West Coast and Chicago.

How is the world changing for Kindel, and how are you reacting to it?

People want it better, and they want it faster, and they want it cheaper.

We’re probably, with the Kindel brand, not going to be the best, we’re not going to be the cheapest, probably we’re not going to be the fastest in terms of getting it, because it’s crafted to order. But we’re going to be more reasonable.

We want to improve that quality, that overall buying experience, by getting it in their hands sooner.